buggery.org

A long, but pleasant and joyful, day today. From Wollongong (where we spent last night with my sister, her family, and my mother) we’ve travelled about 600 kilometres — over the Macquarie Pass to Robertson, then through Goulburn to Gundagai, and down to Albury-Wodonga, across the mighty Murray River to Wangaratta, where we’re now camped in a very spartan but dog-friendly motel.

The dogs have been exceptionally well-behaved, not complaining despite having been in the car for most of the last two days. We’ve seen the Big Potato at Robertson, the Big Merino at Goulburn, and the statue of the dog on the tuckerbox just outside Gundagai. Yes, all of Australia’s most famous and compelling landmarks, in just one day.

Tomorrow we’ll make a quick tourist visit to Glenrowan (where Ned Kelly and his gang had their last stand 124 years ago this month) then it’s on to Melbourne and our new life.

I’d write more but we’re both really weary. Instead, I’ve posted some photos in the Gallery.

Convict memorial, Newcastle. Snapped with my phone.

Just back from lunch with my big bro (he of the supportive letter to the editor) whose first visit to us in Newcastle coincides with our last day in this town. Better late than never.

A delicious lunch and a delicious opportunity to sit in the afternoon sun, drink red wine and discourse. The conversation covers politics, love, growing up and growing old, and the sad preponderance and hate and distrust in the lives of so many people and so many countries. “It’s so hard being alive…” muses Bill as we wonder about the difficulties so many people have in accepting and respecting one another.

Back home now and the house is strangely cold and quiet. Everything is packed, save my iBook and the china mug I’m sipping red wine from as I write. Nothing left to do but wait for the movers to arrive tomorrow morning and get on the road.

We’re sad to be leaving Newcastle – we met many wonderful people here and we hope we’ll be able to maintain those friendships – but we’re looking forward to the change and the new life we have planned in Melbourne. It feels very clear that this is the right thing for us right now.

We’ll be on the road for most of the next few days so updates to this site, if they come, will come sporadically. I’ll try to post some thoughts from the road and you can confidently expect a photo of us at the Dog on the Tuckerbox.

Ignore the awful headline and forgive one or two cringe-making expressions, and this article by John Stapleton in yesterday’s Australian is one of the better efforts by the mainstream media to come to grips with the complex reasons why HIV still happens after all these years.

Of course, the journalist had good talent to draw on, one of them being my husband…

So we’ve (pretty much) finished packing for the move to Melbourne. We have 81 cardboard boxes full of … stuff … waiting for the arrival of Big Strong Boys Inc. in just over 24 hours’ time. We’ve kept out the stereo, a corkscrew, two plastic cups, and two computers. Everything else is packed.

Right now, right next to me, my boyfriend is sitting in front of one of those computers, simultaneously cruising for sex on Gaydar and shopping for our wedding cake. How lucky am I?

An excerpt from today’s letters page in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Pro-vilification

I am a heterosexual Australian man. This year I will be my brother’s best man at his wedding in Canada. This will be a celebration of the love that these two men feel for each other and of the commitment they make to that love. And the Howard-Ruddock anti-gay wedding legislation can do nothing to alter or change that.

What the legislation can do is encourage and support those who seek to vilify people for their sexual preference and to hearten those whose narrow view of what is acceptable is limited to “people like us”.

Bill Kidd, The Channon, June 25.

Thanks, bro.

The Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby, ACON, New Mardi Gras and Sydney Pride Centre have called a COMMUNITY RALLY to demand:

• Equality before the law
• Recognition of our relationships
• Recognition of our families

The rally will be held this Saturday June 26, 2004 at 1.30pm at Sydney Town Hall Square. Come and listen to a few passionate speakers and light entertainment.

More information here.

What brilliance our policy-makers are displaying!

The Prime Minister has announced he’ll give more money to schools who fly the Australian flag. Obviously it’s a cracking idea, especially for those lefty schools full of poor kids. Let’s face it, most of those kids are headed straight for the scrapheap anyway, they might as well learn to salute a piece of cloth before they start lodging their (work-for-the) dole forms.

Well, here at buggery.org we’re a wake-up to this kind of shallow vote-buying, and I’m going to go one better. Whatever the PM is offering, I’ll double it, for the school which teaches its students to burn the flag, not salute it.

Meanwhile, the Labor Party has announced it will make us pay more for prescriptions so they can fund (please, let’s not everyone say “tax cuts” at once).

Football Fans Against Sexual Assault is a group of grassroots AFL and NRL fans disillusioned by the recent sexual assault allegations within our codes.

FFASA does not accept the club cover-ups, denials, excuses and spin doctoring and have set up a web-site in response to the situation. We recognise that sexual violence against women within the football codes reflects a larger problem within the Australian community.

Sign the petition here.

The solstice (winter for me, summer for many of you) approaches. As I write, it’s just a couple of hours before the seasons start to change again and the days start to grow longer (for me; shorter for some).

If I were a proper pagan I’d be dancing, naked and shrivelled, before the waning moon tonight, but I’m not a proper (or improper) pagan, so instead I’m sitting in my living room tapping on my keyboard.

Just seven (increasingly longer) days before we move to Bleaky. We spent most of today packing — my home office is now “the box room” and my dining room is now “centre of operations”. We’re more-or-less packed now.

Can’t wait to get on the road. We’re taking a few days to drive down to our new home, via Wollongong (to stay the night with my mum, my sister and her family) and then through Goulburn, Gundagai and Albury to Wangaratta, then through Benalla, Euroa and Seymour, and down to Melbourne. The journey will take me to parts of this country I’ve never seen, and I’m excited by that.

New horizons, new territory, new beginnings.

Just over a week to go before we move south.

The boxes are piling up in the hall and we’re gradually plowing through the nightmare of utility disconnection/reconnection, change of address for an absurdly large number of credit cards, bank accounts and everything else. Of course nine out of ten of these things have to be done over the phone, at an average on-hold time of 25 or 30 minutes per transaction.

With a bit of luck, if I spend basically the whole of next week on hold, we’ll be almost ready to move by the time the van arrives.